The Tall Man
"Phantasm: the delusion of a disordered mind. a phantom. a spirit. a ghost..." Quotes: "You play a good game boy, but the game is finished, now you die." "You think that when you die, you go to Heaven? You come to us!" Name: Jebediah Morningside Alias(es): The Tall Man, Lord of The Dead Gender: Male Age: Hundreds of years old possibly older Race/Species: Human (Supposedly) Sexuality: Heterosexual Occupation: Mortician, mass murderer, scientist Appearance: The Tall Man appears as a tall (hence his name), white haired man. The Tall Man also has a habit of raising one eyebrow and making other facial expressions, these facial expressions have become an icon of the character. The Tall Man is always seen wearing a black tuxedo suit, especially for funerary occasions. Height: 6′ 4″ Weight: Unknown Powers/Abilities -Afterlife Lordship -Cosmic Awareness -Cosmic Knowledge -Dimensional Travel -Dream Manipulation -Illusion Manipulation -Immortality -Regeneration -Scientific Prowess -Shapeshifting -Space Gate Conjuring -Superhuman Strength -Supernatural Intelligence -Telekinesis -Telepathy -Teleportation -Time travel -Undead Manipulation Equipment/Weapon(s): The tall man has access to advanced alien technology as well as strange serums and hardware. -Sentinel Spheres: Metal levitating spheres containing human brains. Each sphere has a number of tools and weapons such as drills, buzzsaws, lasers, and knives. -Space gates: Gates that allow for interdimensional travel throughout time, alternate realities, realms, etc. Flaws/Weaknesses: The Tallman can be temporarily stunned by high frequency sounds and also has a weakness to extreme cold. Personality: The Tallman is an evil, cunning, maniacal, and mysterious individual. He is generally well reserved and finds slight amusement in people's attempts to stop him. Theme song: https://youtu.be/i3ieQxm_M2I Bio: Relatively little is known about the Tall Man. Once upon a time, he was a kind-hearted soul named Dr. Jebediah Morningside, an ordinary mortician who served as a medic for the Union Army during the American Civil War. Until he was experimenting with inter-dimensional travel and studying the connection between the world of the living and the realm of the dead. He does this to learn the mysteries of life and death, even to achieve immortality. After perfecting a machine that would allow him to travel between worlds, he stepped through the gateway. Upon his return he was no longer Jebediah, but the cold and evil being known to Mike Pearson and his friend Reggie as the Tall Man. It can only be speculated that while in a different dimension Jebediah's body was possessed by another intelligence, or that his physical likeness has been assumed by some otherworldly, evil entity while killing off the original man. It might also be that his experiences changed him radically. Phantasm 24-year-old musician Jody Pearson is raising his 13-year-old brother Mike in a small southern California town disturbed by the mysterious deaths of its citizens. Reggie, a family man and ice cream vendor, joins the brothers in their suspicions that the local mortician, dubbed "The Tall Man", is responsible for the deaths. Mike relays his fears to a fortuneteller and her granddaughter about the possibility of Jody departing and leaving him in the care of his aunt, along with his suspicions about The Tall Man. Mike is shown a small black box and told to put his hand into it. After the box grips his hand, Mike is told by the granddaughter not to be afraid and as the panic subsides, the box relaxes its grip. The notion of fear itself as the killer is established and is what propels Mike towards his final confrontation with The Tall Man. Fearing that Jody will abandon him, Mike follows him one evening to a local bar where he sees him pick up the woman in lavender from the opening scene and follows them to the Morningside Cemetery where Jody and the woman make out with each other. Just then, Mike is scared from his hiding place when a small figure wearing a brown robe jumps out at him. Jody, alerted by Mike's scream, finds him and angrily tells him to go home. When Jody returns to the make out spot, the mysterious woman in lavender is also gone. Mike begins to have horrifying nightmares about the Tall Man and of his dwarf-like minions and determines that something is going on at Morningside Mortuary. After an encounter when he is pinned under a car when one of the dwarfs drops a car on him while he is working in the garage, Mike decides to investigate. The next evening, he goes out, armed with a hunting knife, to Morningside Mortuary and breaks into the building through a basement window. Mike hides when the Tall Man and the cemetery caretaker are seen. Walking down a long hallway at the mortuary, Mike encounters a flying silver sphere, about the size of a softball, coming right at him. The caretaker appears and grabs Mike as the flying sphere comes right at him. Mike ducks in time as the sphere hits the caretaker and drills into his head, spurting out blood. Mike then encounters the Tall Man who chases him to the basement where Mike manages to sever some of the fingers of the Tall Man's right hand. Mike escapes from the mortuary and from two of the Tall Man's brown-robed dwarf minions and runs for home. The next morning, Mike shows Jody the severed finger of the Tall Man which is still twitching with life and bleeding yellow embalming fluid, which Mike is keeping in a small box. When Reggie comes over, and Mike shows them the severed finger, it transforms into a large wasp-like insect which attacks the three of them, but Jody manages to kill it by shoving it into the kitchen garbage disposal. The next evening, Jody goes to Morningside Mortuary to investigate, armed with a .45 caliber pistol, but he is immediately attacked by one of the brown-robed dwarfs in the mortuary basement, forcing him to run. Jody runs into Mike outside the cemetery driving their car when they are chased by a hearse being driven by one of the dwarfs. Jody opens fire on the hearse with his shotgun and forces it off the road. Upon examining the dwarf driver, the two brothers are shocked to find that it is a former friend of theirs now crushed down to small size. Jody and Mike call Reggie who takes the still alive body of their friend into Reggie's ice cream truck while Jody drops Mike off at a local antique store. There, Mike finds an old photo of the Tall Man in an 19th Century photo during the founding of the town. Mike asks the two young store workers, Sally and Sue, to drive him home. During the drive, Mike tells them to stop the car when they see Reggie's overturned ice cream truck lying beside the road. Mike looks around and finds that the creature dwarf has escaped and Reggie is nowhere to be found. Just then, a group of dwarfs attack Mike and the girls who take control of their car and drives away, while Mike falls out the rear window. Mike goes home and tells Jody about Reggie's disappearance and about the recent attack. Jody decides to go back to the mortuary to look for Reggie and the two girls, and Mike wants to come along. But Jody instead locks him in his room, feeling that it would be too dangerous. Mike, using a buckshot shell, manages to disable the lock on his door and takes a pistol from the house to meet up with Jody, but the Tall Man is waiting for him outside (with his hand fully healed) and forcibly takes Mike into his waiting hearse to drive back to the cemetery. Mike manages to shoot out a tire from the car as it arrives at the mortuary which goes out of control. Mike manages to jump out of the car before it hits a tree and explodes, with the Tall Man still inside. Inside the mortuary, Jody is breaking into a crypt of his parents to find if their bodies are still there. Mike enters the building minutes later and sees his parents unearthed coffins and upon opening one, and finds that they are empty. Mike runs and has another encounter with the lethal flying silver sphere, until Jody shows up and destroys the silver sphere with a blast from his shotgun. The two brothers then encounter Reggie, who claims that he made it to the mortuary and has been hiding in a coffin for the past few hours. Reggie also claims to have found the missing girls in a room and freed them. Mike, Jody, and Reggie then go into another room which is a large open area, filled with storage barrels containing several dwarfs, as well as two long poles which upon close examination, is the gateway to an alien planet. Mike is briefly sucked through, but saved by Jody and Reggie who pull him back. Mike realizes that the Tall Man is using the corpses as slaves to his alien planet or realm, and they have to be crushed to small size because of the planet's intense gravity and heat. When the lights in the building go off, Mike disappears and Jody sets off to find him. Alone in the small room, Reggie decides on a gamble to shut down the humming two-pronged gateway by slamming his hands on the tops of the poles, creating a vacuum which he barely escapes. Outside the mortuary, Reggie encounters the woman in lavender, who stabs him to death with the dagger. Mike and Jody come upon the scene and discover the woman in lavender, who changes into the Tall Man, yet another replica. Mike and Jody are forced to run as the mortuary glows and is apparently destroyed. Back home, Mike and Jody, distraught over the death of Reggie, and that the entire town is either dead or consumed by the gateway vacuum, plot on a way to stop the Tall Man by trapping him in a mine shaft since there seems to be no way of killing him. While Jody sneaks out of the house to go to a remote area near a mine shaft to prepare the trap, the Tall Man arrives at the house and attacks Mike who is forced to run. The chase leads to the mine where the Tall Man falls through a fake ground into the hole and to the bottom where Joey pushes a large boulder to seal the hole, thus trapping the Tall Man. After doing so successfully, Mike suddenly wakes up with a start in his house. Mike is next seen lying by the fireplace with the alive-and-well Reggie sitting next to him. Reggie tells Mike he was simply having a bad dream, something that has been a common occurrence since Jody died in a car crash a few weeks earlier. Mike realizes that Jody is indeed dead as well as his parents... all of whom died in the car accident, and the whole thing with the Tall Man was nothing but his horrible nightmare. Reggie suggests that they go away for a while, and Mike agrees. Mike goes into his room to pack his stuff where the Tall Man is waiting for him behind his door. After Mike was shocked to see the Tall Man behind his door, several arms of the dwarf minions pulls Mike through his bedroom window as he screams Phantasm 2 The Tall Man and his minions attempt to take Mike but Reggie manages to save him after turning on the gas while the fireplace was on, blowing up the house. Six years later, the film introduces Liz Reynolds a young woman with a psychic bond to Mike Pearson and the Tall Man that manifests in the form of prophetic nightmares. After she awakens from one, she looks at her dream journal, which includes drawings detailing characters and events from the first film; during this, she recalls a vision that picks up immediately where the first film ended: after the Tall Man's minions attacked Mike through his bedroom mirror, Reggie heard the commotion and ran upstairs to his aid. He tried to get a shotgun, but was attacked by Lurkers and had to flee, although he managed to surreptitiously snuff the pilot lights on the stove. Once upstairs, he dodged the Tall Man and rescued Mike, and the two dove out of the bedroom window to escape as the gas fumes reached the living room fireplace and destroyed the house. Following this, Liz pleads for Mike to find her, as she fears that when her grandfather dies, the Tall Man will take him. Having been institutionalized as delusional since the first film, Mike feels he can no longer ignore Liz's dream pleas, and fakes his recovery to obtain a doctor's release. At night, he returns to Morningside Cemetery to exhume bodies and is interrupted by Reggie who tells him that the attack at the beginning of the film never occurred. Mike reveals that the coffins he dug up are empty and urges Reggie to help him hunt the Tall Man down. En route to Reggie's house, Mike receives a vision of an impending gas explosion, and frantically tries to warn Reggie seconds before his house is consumed in an explosion, killing his wife Celeste, daughter Bonnie, and Aunt Marta. Mike's futile warning convinces Reggie that he is telling the truth and agrees to accompany Mike on his quest. They break into a hardware store at night and stock up on an abundance of supplies and tools to build weapons including a chainsaw and two double-barrelled shotguns welded together. Over the next several months, Mike and Reggie travel the country roads, encountering abandoned towns and pillaged graveyards, as well as a few traps and apparitions the Tall Man has left. One of them is an apparition of a fully nude deceased young woman. The clues lead them to Perigord, Oregon. Meanwhile, Liz's grandfather has died and she accompanies her grandmother to the funeral with her sister Jeri, who leaves prematurely and mysteriously vanishes. While searching for her, Liz explores the mortuary and discovers an exhumed coffin, but before she can open it, the Tall Man surprises her and she runs away. The presiding priest Father Meyers maddened with fear and alcohol withdrawal, desecrates the grandfather's body with a knife in a desperate attempt to thwart the mysterious occurrences he has witnessed. That evening, during a bout of drinking, the reanimated grandfather surprises him at his door and then spirits into the grandmother's bed before absconding with her. In the morning, Liz finds the empty bed and a funeral pin; the Tall Man psychically tells her to return at night if she wants to rescue her grandmother. Prior to their arrival in Perigord, Mike awakens to find that Reggie has picked up a hitchhiker named Alchemy who eerily resembles the nude apparition. They find Perigord deserted and decrepit, and stop in an abandoned bed & breakfast before venturing out to the cemetery. Liz arrives at the mortuary to search for her grandmother, but is confronted by Father Meyers, who tries to rally her to escape with him but he is killed by a flying sphere. She encounters the Tall Man and discovers that her grandmother is now one of his Lurkers. As she escapes, she and Mike meet in the cemetery and return to the bed & breakfast, where they try to sleep. When a tripped alarm distracts them downstairs, the Tall Man captures Liz, knocks her unconscious and drives her away in his hearse. Mike and Reggie chase him in Mike's deceased brother Jody's car, but the Tall Man runs them off the road and the car explodes. At the crematorium, Liz slowly regains consciousness while being taken into the furnace room by the Tall Man's mortician assistants. She fakes unconsciousness by allowing the assistant to partially undress her and take her crucifix. She manages to fight off the mortician by sending him into an active furnace and escapes. Mike and Reggie break into the mortuary and venture into the embalming room. As Reggie pours hydrochloric acid into a tank of embalming fluid, Mike discovers that the Tall Man, having learned from his mistakes, has hidden his transdimensional portal (Spacegate) behind a heavy steel door. In lieu of a handle, there is a large round "keyhole" in the wall and Mike realizes that they must capture a sphere in order to access the room. They then split up to find Liz. Reggie searches the basement where he is attacked by a Graver, then four Lurkers. Mike saves Liz from a flying silver sphere but they are both attacked by the other mortician, who is defeated when the silver sphere pins his hand to a door and he cuts off the hand with an axe in an attempt to escape another sphere. A laser-armed flying golden sphere pursues Mike and Liz but instead kills the second mortician as he tries to catch them. Reuniting with Reggie, the three pry the mortician's severed hand off the door and carry the embedded silver sphere to the embalming room, where they insert it into the "keyhole" and open the metal door to the white room containing the portal. Reggie ignites the flamethrower to burn the building down, but the Tall Man surprises them, knocking Reggie down, throwing Mike into the portal, and carrying Liz to the embalming table. Reggie helps Mike climb back out, while the Tall Man prepares to embalm Liz alive with a giant probe; Mike pulls the silver sphere from the keyhole and attacks the Tall Man with it unsuccessfully. Liz gets free and stabs the Tall Man with the probe, and Reggie quickly activates the embalming machine, pumping the acid-contaminated fluid into him, causing him to melt. Reggie sets fire to the room and hallways and the trio are greeted at the back entrance by Alchemy, who has procured an abandoned hearse. They ride off with Mike and Liz in the rear compartment and Reggie and Alchemy in the driver's cabin. Reggie thanks Alchemy for coming back for them and tries to flirt with her until she gently plucks a section of hair and flesh from her head, revealing that she is not human. As Reggie screams, the hearse swerves wildly and Mike and Liz try to get out; the hearse stops and a bloody and battered Reggie hits the window before falling to the ground. As the hearse begins to drive away, Mike and Liz tell each other "this is just a dream" but the slot to the driver's cabin opens, revealing the Tall Man who tells them "No, it's not!" Hands break the rear window and pull Mike and Liz through it... mirroring the ending of the first film. Phantasm 3 A new Tall Man emerges from the white room dimension fork. During this time, the hearse driving Liz and Mike carries on and explodes. Reggie, who was attacked by the Alchemy/Tall Man creature, rushes over and finds Liz dead and a dwarf devouring her face. After killing a few dwarfs with his 4-barrel shotgun, the Tall Man appears, apprehending Reggie and an unconscious Mike but leaves when Reggie threatens to detonate a grenade. Stating that he wants Mike in one piece, the Tall Man leaves with Liz's head in hand claiming to return for Mike when he's well again. After apparently spending two years comatose in a hospital, Mike has a near death experience, in which his brother Jody appears and tells him he's not ready to cross over into the light. Mike walks on but the Tall Man stands in his way causing him to wake up. Just as Reggie arrives, Mike is attacked by a demon nurse but fights her off. A sphere emerges from her head and crashes out through the window. Back at home, Jody appears again to warn Mike but the Tall Man arrives via dimension fork, fights off Reggie and Jody (now forcibly transformed into a charred flying sphere) and draws Mike through the gate with him. The next morning, Reggie (with the Jody-sphere) travels to the small town of Holtsville, which turns out to be deserted. Reggie is captured by three looters who lock him in his Cuda's trunk and drive on to another house. There they are attacked and killed by a little boy named Tim, who also releases Reggie. After they have buried three looters in the yard, Tim tells Reggie how the Tall Man took his parents and destroyed the town. In the morning, Reggie and Tim find the three graves empty and their pink hearse gone. Setting out to find the Tall Man, Reggie wants to leave Tim with a woman looking after orphans but the boy hides in the trunk and comes along. Reggie enters the Holtsville mausoleum and is confronted by a sphere. Before he can destroy it, he is assaulted and subdued by two young black women, Tanesha and Rocky. Reg tries to warn them but the sphere kills Tanesha, as well as damaging Rocky's nunchaku. Tim appears and shoots it out of the air with his pistol. The three join forces and drive on, looking for a town called Boulton, which contains a large mortuary. On their way the come across a convoy of hearses driven by gravers and follow them. As they camp outside, the Jody-sphere floats over to Reggie. In a dream, Jody appears and leads Reggie to the Tall Man's lair, where Mike is imprisoned in a small cell. The two free him but the Tall Man reappears and pursues the three. Jody is transformed back into a sphere and Reggie awakes. Jody appears again, opens another gate and Mike emerges. The Tall Man tries to emerge as well but Reggie manages to shut the gate just as he was about to reach through, cutting off the Tall Man's hands. They manage to fight off the small creatures the hands morph into and also later the pink hearse containing the three comically-zombified looters. They reach Boulton mortuary, where they come across a cryonics facility, which reminds Mike that the Tall Man dislikes cold. While Reggie, Rocky and Tim are separately attacked by the looters, Mike consults with the Jody-sphere, who explains that the Tall Man is amassing an army to conquer dimensions. He also shows him in a dream what the Tall Man does with the dwarf creatures he has created from the dead: he removes the sapient part of the brains to create the spheres, turning the body into a drone and the mind into a killer. The Tall Man senses their presence and before they can leave, and paralyzes Mike. Surrounded by hundreds of spheres, the Tall Man reaches for Mike, who wakes up and finds himself strapped to the table. The Tall Man grabs and subdues the Jody-sphere and welcomes Mike. Soon after, two of the looters, Rufus and Henry, wheel in Tim. Mike tries to give a message to the boy, saying "There are thousands of them", but is paralyzed beyond speech by the Tall Man. Rocky meanwhile manages to shake off her attacker and goes on to fight off Reggie's. Cut free by the Jody-sphere, Tim runs into the remaining looters who are killed by the Jody-sphere and Reggie's 4-barrel shotgun. The trio crash into the embalming room, where the Tall Man has begun operating on Mike. Rocky impales the Tall Man with a spear dipped in liquid nitrogen, causing his flesh to begin melting. Rocky and Reggie lock him into the refrigerator room. A golden sphere breaks out of his head, crashes outside and chases through the corridors. Surprised by the golden sphere, Reggie catches it with a plunger and is almost overpowered by it. With help from Rocky and Tim, he submerges the sphere in the nitrogen tank neutralizing it. In the meantime, Mike climbs from the table and sees yellow blood issuing from his wound. He looks into a mirror and sees a golden sphere in his own head, concealed his torn skin. Just after the Tall Man's sphere has been dumped into the nitrogen, Mike appears, showing silver eyeballs, complaining of the cold and walking outside. Reggie chases after him but Mike warns him to stay away. Jody leaves as well telling Reggie that they'll be in touch. Reggie suggests searching the mortuary but Rocky leaves having had enough of dealing with the undead. Reggie and Tim go back inside and Tim reports that Mike said that "There are thousands of them." Unknown to them, dozens of spheres are hovering above them. In the next room, Tim finds the poles of the dimension fork and the nitrogen tank overturned. He goes back to find Reggie pinned to the wall by force of the spheres. Tim tries to get his gun but a new Tall Man reappears and watches as Tim is pulled through a window by a creature followed by the sound of him getting torn apart and killed... continuing the films' trademark ending. Phantasm 4 Mike flees from Boulton mortuary in the hearse, while Reggie is trapped inside by The Tall Man's spheres. However, The Tall Man decides to let Reggie go for the moment. Mike's spherical brother Jody persuades a reluctant Reggie to go looking for Mike. On the way, Reggie runs into a police car which pulls him over. He is attacked by the policeman, who turns out to be a mysterious psychopathic demon, but manages to escape after blowing up the police car and destroying the body. The next morning, Reggie meets a woman called Jennifer, whom he rescues from her overturned car and takes her to the next town, which is also abandoned. They stay the night at an abandoned motel and Reggie tells her the story of The Tall Man. Jennifer doesn't believe him and also rejects his advances. Having dreamed of Mike, Reggie wakes up and unbuttons Jennifer's nightshirt, discovering two spheres sticking in her breasts. As they fly out and attack him, he smashes one with a sledgehammer but is pinned to the wall by the other. In desperation he strikes his tuning fork and the sphere explodes. Jennifer grabs his leg but he smashes her with the hammer and leaves. Mike, trying to uncover the mysteries of The Tall Man and to escape the transformation, drives through abandoned towns and remembers the last days before The Tall Man's arrival. The Tall Man appears in the back of the hearse and takes control of the car before he disappears into the coffin. Mike drives the hearse into Death Valley. Mike intends to force The Tall Man to a confrontation and writes his testament. He finds himself at a 19th Century colonial-style house with an earlier model of the gate inside. Mike meets a man resembling The Tall Man, who however welcomes him cordially and introduces himself as Jebediah Morningside. Jebediah wants to speak with Mike, who, however, is frightened and again escapes through the gate. Jebediah's wife, appears and tells him to let Mike go. Back in Death Valley, Mike realizes that he can move rocks by the power of his mind. Jody appears. Mike is distrustful and accuses his brother of having abandoned him. Jody defends his behavior and disappears. Mike works on his car, using parts to build a makeshift sphere. Hoping that he might stop Jebedaiah from becoming the evil Tall Man, he again goes through a gate, but finds himself in the deserted city of Los Angeles and escapes The Tall Man only with Jody's help. Meanwhile, Reggie arrives at Death Valley and fights off a group of zombie dwarfs when Mike and Jody appear through a gate. Mike embraces Reggie and tells him not to trust Jody. Reggie passes Mike the tuning fork, as the two brothers pass through the gate, appearing in Jebediah's house. Invisible to the old man, they witness how he perfects his craft and approaches the inter-dimensional gate. Mike tries to stab him before he can pass through but misses him, as they are in another dimension. Jebedaiah vanishes and moments later is replaced by the evil Tall Man who emerges in his place, having taken his form and using his human appearance as a disguise. Mike escapes through the gate, finding himself in a cemetery. He is attacked and overpowered by his brother and awakes on mortuary slab. Jody holds him as The Tall Man begins operating. A panicking Mike strikes the tuning fork, thus immobilizing his opponents. Mike then kills Jody with a sphere but The Tall Man revives and telekinetically takes the fork from Mike. Again, Mike escapes through the gate back to Death Valley, pursued by The Tall Man. Reggie tries to shoot The Tall Man but is overpowered. Mike summons the sphere he built. The Tall Man is impaled in the neck but he is unharmed and he pulls out the sphere and crushes it with his right hand, amused. At that moment, Mike activates the hearse's motor, which turns out to be the true weapon against the Tall Man (a strange inter-dimensional bomb). A distracted Tall Man is vanquished after the explosion consumes both him and the car. However, a new Tall Man immediately comes through the gate, revealing that the Tall Man is but one of many. He resumes the surgery started by the last Tall Man he removes the golden sphere from Mike's head and disappears again through the gate. As Mike is close to death, Reggie arms himself with his 4-barreled shotgun and enters the gate, determined to overcome The Tall Man. As Mike lies dying on the desert floor near the gateway, he has a childhood memory, climbing into Reggie's ice cream truck with him and driving off into the night. 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